


No (Sound)Barrier Can Hold Me Back

by notsopowerfulowl (theowlgalaxy)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Deaf Tony, Don't know how to rate this yet, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Secret Identity, but it's minor, more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-02-09 17:09:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18642436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theowlgalaxy/pseuds/notsopowerfulowl
Summary: No one knows who's behind the mask of the fast-talking, quick-witted Iron Man. Not the media, not the government, not even the other Avengers. All they know is that Tony Stark was deaf and Iron Man just couldn't keep his mouth shut - and that's what Tony likes them to think.An AU where Tony was born with hearing difficulties and he becomes Iron Man anyway.(Written for Tony Stark Bingo 2019, square S1: "Voice")





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just to note: I'm not HOH or fluent in ASL so all this is what I've been looking up. If I've portrayed any representations wrong, please do let me know and I'll do my best to correct it.

It took Howard Stark exactly four months to look down upon his only child with disappointment; Tony was, in fact, four months old when Maria finally decided to take her son to the family doctor. Her concerns had begun as early as two weeks after his birth, when Howard had knocked back a few too many glasses again and the crystal slipped out of his fingers. The loud smash startled a gasp out of her, and after she’d had another argument with her husband, she then realised little Anthony hadn’t flinched at the shatter. When at the end of the third month her baby started vocalising sounds, her worries calmed by a degree, however her smile faltered when he would fail to notice her approach or when his name was called.

A visit with Dr. Manningham would lead to a screening test, which would inform Maria that her son had severe hearing loss in both ears—he was not entirely deaf, but he struggled to hear and differentiate most sounds. She spent the entire drive home stiff as a statue. Tucking her baby boy next to his Bucky Bear, she had squared her shoulders and strode towards Howard’s workshop.

Later that night, Howard stood over his son’s cot, gazing straight ahead at nothing with a glass of whiskey hanging loosely between his thumb and forefinger.

“Why did you do this to me?” he slurred, the words thick on his tongue. “Why did you have to be this way?”

Naturally, Anthony didn’t reply. Didn’t even stir. Howard wobbled as he lifted his weight off the cot.

“You coulda been so much more….” His hands curled into fists. “So much more than an invalid!” He slammed his fists down onto the railing of the cot, voice consumed by rage. The sudden shudder startled baby Anthony from his sleep, and immediately he wailed out in fear. A minute later, Ana Jarvis rushed into the nursery. She scooped up the terrified child and murmured as she rocked him back and forth, rubbing circles over his back. Not long after, Edwin Jarvis followed by Maria entered, only to find Howard shouting at Ana for interfering.

“Ana, Edwin, would you please take care of Anthony and put a cup of tea on?” Maria requested, her tone was calm, but an undercurrent of steel ran beneath. “Just one cup should be enough…”

Edwin nodded and guided his wife out of the nursery with a comforting hand on her back. It would take 15 minutes of soft reassurances and gentle swaying for the baby to feel safe enough to calm down. Both husband and wife pretended not to hear the argument tearing across from the other side of the mansion. Both pretended not to notice how it continued for over an hour. Both pretended to forget that neither parent came down to the kitchen to retrieve their infant son.

Ana and Edwin signed up for ASL classes the very next day. While Tony’s parents busied themselves with other responsibilities and tasks they deemed more important, Ana and Edwin taught him how to sign as they learnt at the same time. Tony took to signing with fluid ease, the language native on his hands as he poured his wide eyed wonder and eagerness into rushed motions and gestures. Tony addressed Ana with three signs—palm facing forwards with four pressed down against the heel and the thumb left out, then ring and pinkie finger stayed while index and middle lay on top of the bent thumb, then a repetition of the first sign[1]. But for Edwin, he gave him a nickname to shorten the addressal—a loose fist with pinkie finger out making a motion shaped like the letter J[2]. The Jarvises acted as the family translator, and the language barrier annoyed Howard to the point where he refused to look at Tony when he signed, instead looking at Edwin while the butler translated.

At five years old, Howard had decided Tony had been deaf for long enough. Pulling at some of the strings wrapped around his finger, he heard of an experimental device that could assist hearing. Within the week, Howard had his son sitting in the lab where the device was being refined. Perched on a lab stool with his feet dangling, Tony waited stiffly and silently while the audiologist, Dr Oscar Carlson, sat on his own chair and read over the results of Tony’s last hearing test on his table. Howard stood next to his son, one hand tight on the back of the younger Stark’s chair. Eyes wide in fear, Tony watched the two men talk as if they’d forgotten Tony was even in the room. He held still as Dr Carlson adjusted the settings on the transistor, only to move when the audiologist moved his arms to slip the straps onto his shoulders and around his chest. Tightening it into place, Dr Carlson hooked the earpieces around behind Tony’s ears and slotted them into his ear canal.

Tony frowned down at the bulky device; the transistor sat against his sternum and was the size of a portable radio. He reached up to touch the device—already wondering about the circuitry and fingers itching to remove the casing—only to have his hand slapped away by Howard. His father shook his finger at Tony’s face and told him something, but despite the fact he couldn’t hear Howard, the stern cross look that stormed his father’s face and the stinging redness of his small hands spoke loud enough.

Dr Carlson talked for a moment as he leaned in to work some of the dials on the transistor. He glanced up at Howard with a question, who nodded in response. The audiologist flicked a switch on the transistor.

Then Tony screamed.

He flung his hands up and yanked out the earpieces, ceasing the overwhelming pain of the screeching static. Dr Carlson apologised over and over to both Tony and Howard and hurried to change the setting. Hot tears streamed down Tony’s face as he wailed, fear pushed to terror, heart pounding in his head. Howard grabbed his son by the shoulders and shook him, demanding for him to stop crying. Quickly his temper flared to breaking point, and he inhaled sharply through his nose.

And slapped Tony across the face.

Instantly, Tony stopped sobbing, raising his hand to his cheek in shock. Tears still blurred his vision as Dr Carlson placed the earpieces back in and switched the device on again. This time, the silence was broken without pain by buzzes. Tony blinked as he turned his head towards the sounds and saw the radio on the desk. His eyes widened as the buzzes changed—the noises changed in length and vibration speed. He spun his head over to Dr Carlson, wonder replacing the tears, and the audiologist. Tony watched as the man’s mouth moved, amazed when the buzzes triggered at the same time. He signed his enthusiasm to Dr Carlson and heard ( _heard_!) when he laughed in response.

A hand grabbed Tony’s arm and halted his spiel with a tight grip. He gazed up at Howard, who shook his head. Tony remained still for the rest of the appointment.

As the two left the centre later on, Howard pulled his son aside and spoke to him, and for the first time, Tony could hear him. But Tony couldn’t understand him.

It would be later that Tony realised what Howard had said: _Don’t ever cry again, boy. Starks are made of iron. They don’t ever cry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sign translations:  
> 1 Spells out "Ana". [1]  
> 2 The letter "J"[2]  
> See this image [here](http://www.queerasl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ASL-alphabet-small.jpg) for the American Sign Language alphabet.
> 
> So how is everyone? How are you coping after Endgame? No spoilers in this fic, I promise!  
> Anyway, it's hard to tell when I'll be able to update this fic: I've sprained the muscles in both my arms and have been ordered to get as much rest as I can. The first draft of chapter two is mostly done and I'll be redrafting it soon, but I don't know how long that will take.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [@notsopowerfulowl](https://notsopowerfulowl.tumblr.com/). Come and chat, whether it be about this fic or a prompt or even about your pet! The inbox is always open!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Just as a warning, there is a use of the word "r****d" against Tony.

It would take a month for Howard to grow tired of the phlegmy ache in his throat after screaming at his son. After the umpteenth time he received watery brown eyes staring up at him in confusion, Howard reached out his feelers once more, _discreetly_ , and tracked down a speech pathologist—one skilled enough to work successfully with hard-of-hearing patients, but askewed enough to accept large “tips” for keeping it off the records.

Dr. Hart corrected his yellow-rimmed glasses while he stood in the mansion’s entrance. He stared down his nose at a petrified Tony shielding himself behind Jarvis’ leg. A sharp look from Howard forced Tony to step away and stand in front of the towering man, barely hiding his shaking. The man regarded him with distant scrutiny, like a jeweller holding up the gemstone of an elderly customer under a magnifying glass. Dr. Hart talked solely with Howard and they moved into Howard’s home office. He looked over the forms in silence, the throbbing vein on Howard's temple becoming more pronounced with each passing minute.

Finally, the pathologist placed the papers aside, leisurely, then announced his verdict.

“I’ll take the case.”

And so began one of the more unusual associations of Tony’s life. Biweekly sessions took place in Dr. Hart’s office; the hard wooden chair for his patients was unforgiving against Tony’s back, while the pathologist sat comfortably in his plush black leather chair. Each time shivers travelled through his body, though Tony didn’t if they were from how cold the room was or if it was from sitting under Dr. Hart’s cool looming stare. If Dr. Hart was an entomologist, then Tony had been the firefly in his jar—awaiting the day he could pin his specimen down into a neat little display case that would look just right on his wall, right next to his Harvard PhD certificate and newspaper articles.

It would take five painstakingly long years before Tony walked out of the cold office for the last time and into the warm spring air. His lipreading skills covered him when he couldn’t distinguish between sounds and words, and he could read every criticism that shaped people’s mouths even when he couldn’t hear the disappointment. In fact, he had become so fluent in both that someone could easily have taken him for a person with hearing—that is, if they couldn’t see the metal box hanging against his chest.

Tony hated that box. He hated how the straps chaffed his shoulders and made them ache. He hated how it was still visible even when he hid them under his uniform because the white button up shirts were thin and the case stood out against his skin. He hated how his ear would grow sore from the ear piece tugging at it whenever he turned his body or reached up too high. The only thing keeping him from dismantling it was the threat of another screaming session.

So when Tony was shipped off away from Howard and to the most elite boarding school in the State, he immediately ripped it open and severed a number of connections in one of the microchips inside. With the hearing aid out of order, he provided a justified reason for not wearing it, and pretended to not speak or hear at all. He relied on lipreading and text-reading for all of his learning, communicating with the other students and teachers through sign language. Since no one could understand sign nor wanted to learn it, so they either ignored him completely when asking questions to the class or waited until he scribed his answer into a notebook one of the teachers gave him.

Tony got away with this ruse for two years before his father found out, when the school boasted to him that they finally hired an ASL interpreter. Tony could feel the vibrations of Howard’s rage when he discovered the tampering, but allowed his son to continue his education without the hearing aid, unwilling to lose any more face.

When he graduated and entered MIT at fourteen years old, the translator didn’t follow and Howard conjured up another hearing aid. Of course, being far away from his father once again, he didn’t wear it. Instead, he developed a small text-to-speech device and learnt how to type quickly.

It would be at MIT that Tony would meet the third person to learn ASL for him. At this point, Tony’s anger at the lack of compromise made for his deafness left him jaded towards his parents, so he decided _fuck it_ , he’ll do what he wants. This reasoning led to too many drinks at a party and two hours heaving into a toilet with the one sober guy there rubbing his back. Tony would later learn that the guy’s name was James Rhodes, after waking up on his dorm’s couch with a hangover splitting his head open. James silently handed him some aspirin and a glass of water, then walked him to Tony’s dorm to make sure he didn’t pass out along the way.

The next time Tony ran into James, it was at the lecture of a subject they both had to take. James held his hand, flat with thumb tucked in slightly, next to his temple and motioned his hand forward, like a casual salute[3]. He hooked his index finger over his thumb and pressed the three against his palm’s heel, changed to making an O shaped with his hand, returned to the first position but with his middle finger over his thumb as well, then stuck his pinkie and thumb out with the other three tucked in[4]. Tony’s vision had blurred at the somewhat clumsy greeting, though he’ll never admit it to anyone, especially to the man he now calls both “Rhodey” and his best friend.

The biggest surprise about Rhodey was that he stuck around without ulterior motive. Back at boarding school, most of the students were the children of influential families and associated with each other for the benefit of connections. Tony hadn’t been high on the list despite his name claim, because, as they so eloquently described it, who’d be friends with a “deaf retard”?

Rhodey stayed by his side purely out of friendship, backing him up whenever people gave him grief for whatever reason. He’ll never forget the time Rhodey clocked a guy for saying that the reason why Tony was deaf because his mother was a drunken whore. Tony would return the favour whenever some dumbass mouthed racist bullshit at his friend.

Their dorm was the only place, besides the Stark mansion, where Tony would wear his hearing aids and speak out loud. At first, it was for safety, in cases such as when Rhodey wanted to avoid startling him when he was elbows deep in a project or if something was about to go wrong and Tony needed to warn Rhodey to open the windows. Eventually he would extend the speaking to other times outside of his engineering binges, joining Rhodey in watching movies and starting debates about various topics like which was better out of Star Wars and Star Trek.

Tony waited for the moment that Rhodey would grow sick of him. He was convinced that there would be some part of him that his friend would see and decide to leave before the disappointment that followed the youngest Stark tainted him too.

Then Tony received a phone call.

On December the 17th of 1991, the secretary of the Head of MIT shared a look of sympathy as she relayed a message from Obadiah Stane, Howard’s business partner and Tony’s honorary uncle. Obie had delivered sad news: There had been an accident.

Both Tony’s mother and father, Maria and Howard Stark, were dead. Ended in a car crash. They suspected alcohol was involved.

Tony stared for a minute, utterly blank of emotion. Just as the secretary asked if he was alright, he nodded, touched his chin just under his mouth with the tips of his straightened fingers and motioned his flat hand forward[5], and left.

Rhodey found him later that day in their dorm. Tony stared at a large bottle of unopened vodka (not scotch—scotch was to be savoured and not chugged like cheap cardboard wine, Howard always swore) on the kitchen table in front of him, wrought with the conflicting desire to both dampen the inevitable anguish before it crashed over him and the twitch in his fingers which urged him to propel the very thing that caused the oncoming pain against the wall.

Luckily, and thankfully, the choice was removed from sight by a caring hand. Rhodey poured the bottle down the sink, concern increasing as his friend showed no reaction, no emotion. Rhodey guided Tony away from the kitchen and towards the sitting/lounge area. He popped a VHS tape of Star Trek: The Next Generation into their VCR, pulled Tony down onto the two seater couch, and let his shocked friend lean against him.

When Tony began to shake halfway through an episode, Rhodey tugged him into a hug as the sobs overtook him. Tony let out those tears of hurt and frustration built up after years, because they were going to fall anyway now the dark clouds had broken open, so might as well take control of what little he could. He cried his eyes red and his throat sore, until a headache pounded at his head like it was digging for water for a well. One night—the one when he knew he had found someone he could trust—he allowed iron to break.

Tony would never stop feeling grateful for Rhodey sticking by his side that night. For staying with him even when he did throw himself into parties and bottles of alcohol. For dragging him out of trouble and watching him back as he struggled to sober up through his grief.

But Rhodey would graduate and enlist into the Air Force. With a trip to the airport not long enough and a difficult goodbye, Rhodey left with a parting hug and a promise to keep in contact—leaving Tony behind and alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sign translations:  
> 3 "Hi" or "Hello" [3]  
> 4 Spells out "Tony" [4]  
> 5 "Thank you" [5] (see how the word is signed [here](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=2186))  
> See this image [here](http://www.queerasl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ASL-alphabet-small.jpg) for the American Sign Language alphabet.
> 
> Oof, that took longer that expected...  
> Next chapter I'll be touching upon Tony taking up the reins of SI and his first meeting with Pepper, before reaching Iron Man 1. I added an extra chapter because these first two plus Pepper's brief introduction were originally intended to be a single chapter, but I had to break them up.  
> In other news, arms and hands are still hurting, which is not good, but they're slowly recovering. You know all those fics were Tony gets injured and needs to rest but he attempts to escape from the hospital/his room to go to his workshop anyway? That's how I feel right now: stubbornly toughing it out through the pain to do what I love, while bitching to everyone and anyone who'll listen.  
> On a more positive note, all my assignments for this semester have been submitted! So I'll have less time stressing over deadlines and more time stressing over disappointing my thesis supervisor! :D
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [@notsopowerfulowl](https://notsopowerfulowl.tumblr.com/). Come and chat, whether it be about this fic or a prompt or even about your pet! The inbox is always open!


End file.
